Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

by Jon Meacham

and plunged his feet into a basin of cold water—a lifelong habit he believed good for his health.2,3,4 At Monticello, his plantation in the

Disorder, which Jefferson hated, threatened harmony, which he loved.

Jefferson believed the will of an educated, enlightened majority should prevail.

Our greatest leaders are neither dreamers nor dictators: They are, like Jefferson, those who articulate national aspirations yet master the mechanics of influence and know when to depart from dogma.

America has always been torn between the ideal and the real, between noble goals and inevitable compromises. So was Jefferson. In his head and in his heart, as

Broadly put, philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson’s genius was that he was both and could do both,

simultaneously. Such is the art of power.

“At 14 years of age the whole care and direction of myself was thrown on my self entirely, without a relative or friend qualified to advise or guide me,

At the age of thirty-seven she was the mother of eight surviving children—the oldest, Jane, was seventeen; Thomas was fourteen; the youngest were two-year-old twins.

Peter Randolph advised Jefferson to enroll at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg,

Jefferson gambled on horses and hunted foxes; he gossiped and courted and danced.

College life centered on the Wren Building, which was, in 1760, a three-and-a-half-story, brick-walled structure topped by a cupola.

It was said that Jefferson studied fifteen hours a day, rising at dawn and reading until two o’clock each morning.23 At twilight in Williamsburg

“Not less than two hours a day should be devoted to exercise, and the weather should be little regarded,” Jefferson

“Mr. Wythe continued to be my faithful and beloved mentor in youth, and my most affectionate friend through life,” Jefferson recalled.47 In Wythe, the

his cousin Peyton Randolph,

attorney general of Virginia, Speaker of the House of Burgesses, and the first president of the Continental Congress.52 Born

Small, Wythe, Fauquier, and Peyton Randolph established the standards by which Jefferson judged everyone else.

Leadership, Jefferson was learning, meant knowing how to distill complexity into a comprehensible message to reach the hearts as well as the minds of the larger world.

A poor public speaker himself, he admired gifted orators such as Patrick Henry.